ASR technologies enable microphone-equipped computing devices to interpret speech and thereby provide an alternative to conventional human-to-computer input devices such as keyboards or keypads. Many telecommunications devices are equipped with ASR technology to detect the presence of discrete speech such as a spoken nametag or control vocabulary like numerals, keywords, or commands. For example, ASR can match a spoken command word with a corresponding command stored in memory of the telecommunication device to carry out some action, like dialing a telephone number.
Some ASR systems provide assistance to the users to guide the user when using the system. Often, the user assistance can take the form of a tutorial to quickly provide users with an overview of the system. Tutorials do not, however, provide the user with guidance once the tutorial is completed. The ASR assistance can include user guidance to instruct users how to use the system or provide prompts to remind users how to complete commands. The assistance can range from simple instructions for using a command to more sophisticated interaction with the user. The user prompts can guide the user on how to format commands (e.g. “say the complete phone number”) or provide the user with command options. Very detailed user guidance can slow the user's interaction with the ASR while minimal user guidance may not provide sufficient assistance to novice users. Some systems can enable users to turn the user guidance on or off, but the user must be familiar with how request it. Moreover, even if a user is familiar with turning the assistance on or off, the user may be very familiar with one or more sets of commands for the ASR, but can not be familiar at all with other commands.